Welcome to The Big Squeeze! This edition first highlights our team's history plus essential best practices for employee onboarding. Our focus is on improving the experience for your employees while adhering to best practices, and giving you the insights on why the onboarding experience is so crucial. Scroll to the end for our talent spotlight too!

Meet Team Tangerine ...

After owning a kid-friendly coffee shop and working in sales and debt financing, I slid into recruiting and after a decade of experience, founded Tangerine Search in 2019. I started with a mission in mind: to provide expert HR and Outsourced Talent Acquisition knowledge and services at a fraction of the price—pay for only what you need as you need it.

From my very first day, I loved recruiting! Talking to so many different folks every day, getting the chance to help people make a life decision, helping our clients find the right fit for their work, it was all exciting and interesting to me. Recruiting is a dynamic process, and although the fundamentals of the work remain the same, the fact that you’re working with real people means the work brings so much diversity and variety.

Headquartered in Oakland, California, team Tangerine specializes in technical recruiting and staffing plus Fractional HR services to help our clients with compliance, people data and talent management. We know how to help you create, align and measure strategies and tactics that align with your company values—and work with you to build the resources and practices that help your employees experience authentic inclusion and visibility.

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7 Ways to Speed Up Your Hiring Process

In 2025, the average time to fill a position increased to 70 days, up from 66 last year. Greater time to fill causes lost productivity, team stress and greater difficulty in attracting top talent. The good news? You can leverage the following strategies (plus our support) to help reduce your time to fill without compromising quality. By optimizing your recruiting approach, you can engage candidates faster and stay competitive.

1—Foster a Hiring Culture Across the Organization

Make recruitment a company-wide effort. Encourage collaboration across all levels to attract top talent and fill positions faster without compromising quality.

• Keep your team informed with updates on open roles.
• Launch an employee referral program with incentives.
• Encourage employee advocacy through social media and reviews.

2—Strengthen Your Employer Brand

75% of job seekers evaluate a company’s brand before applying. A strong, authentic employer brand attracts candidates faster and reduces delays in filling positions.

• Improve your Careers page with employee testimonials and benefits details.
• Leverage social media to showcase company culture and values. You've built a great culture, make sure folks know it!
• Create engaging content like an employer blog, to share updates and success stories.

3—Build and Maintain a Strong Talent Pipeline

Starting recruitment from scratch can slow down your hiring process. A strong talent pipeline lets you engage prequalified candidates, saving time and effort.

• Capture information from interested candidates for future roles, even if their exact role isn't open right now. Make sure you're looking through that pipeline for matches when you start a search—you've already built a goldmine of talent!
• Re-engage past candidates who showed potential.
• Stay connected with alumni for quick rehires and referrals.

4—Efficiently Manage Applicant Volume

With an average of 222 applications per job, being able to manage large candidate pools is crucial to speeding up your hiring process. You'll definitely want to call on Tangerine Search for this one. We can swiftly and effectively cut down your time to hire with our pre-vetted candidate pipeline.

• Set clear selection criteria to evaluate applications quickly.
• Use screening questions in applications to identify the most qualified early.

5—Enhance the Candidate Experience

52% of candidates would reject a job offer due to a poor recruitment experience. A positive, transparent process helps keep top talent engaged and reduces time to fill. We keep the experience positive—from an easy resume submission to white glove interviewing and hiring steps.

• Communicate frequently about timelines and updates.
• Provide interview prep with detailed format and logistics. Communicate expectations and share what each round of interviewing is designed to measure. Remember, interviewing is stressful. Give the folks you've invited to interview all the information they need to be successful.
• Allow time for candidate questions to empower informed decisions.

6—Streamline Your Interview Process

With interviews taking over four weeks on average, it's crucial to optimize your process to avoid delays and losing top candidates.

• Eliminate unnecessary stages and consolidate rounds into a single day.
• Train more interviewers to reduce scheduling bottlenecks.
• Leverage technology like online assessments and video interviews. This is particularly important for high-volume recruiting efforts.
• Gather immediate feedback to make decisions quickly.

7—Streamline Your Offer Process

Acting quickly when extending an offer is key to maintaining momentum.

• Develop standardized templates for easy customization.
• Preapprove salary ranges to avoid delays.
• Include an offer expiration date to prompt timely decisions.
• Pre-close your candidates with a verbal offer before sending the formal one.

Final Thoughts: Track Your Progress

Surprisingly, only 12% of companies actively track time to fill—a missed opportunity. To reduce your time to fill, it’s crucial to first understand your current metrics and pinpoint where delays happen in your hiring process.

By tracking your time to fill, along with other KPIs like time spent in each recruitment stage, candidate satisfaction scores, and offer acceptance rates, you can better measure your progress. This will allow you to see the impact of improvements and identify additional areas for optimization.

Thank you for your continued partnership. I’m excited to assist with your hiring needs and support your company’s growth with top talent. If you have any questions or need help, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!​

Best regards,

April Starlight | CEO & Sr Recruiter 🍊